Today in Labor History October 21, 1981: Kuwasi Balagoon was finally captured following a Brinks robbery. Balagoon had been a member of the Black Panther Party. While in prison, he became disillusioned with the Panthers, became an anarchist and joined the more militant Black Liberation Army. He escaped from prison twice. In 1979, while on the lam from his second prison escape, he helped to free political prisoner Assata Shakur, who fled to Cuba and lives there to this day. In 1986, he died in prison from AIDS. In 2019, PM Press released a collection of writings by and about Balagoon called, “Kuwasi Balagoon: A Soldier's Story.” And the prison abolitionist group, Black and Pink, which supports LGBTQ and HIV-positive prisoners, has, since 2020, run a "Kuwasi Balagoon award" for those living with HIV/AIDS. #workingclass #LaborHistory #anarchism #blackpanthers #BlackLiberationArmy #racism #blm #newafrika #assatashakur #prison #prisonescape #politicalrisoner #author #writer #books #BlackMastadon @npub1wceq...lzu8

Today in Labor History October 21, 1894: French anarchists incited a revolt on the penal colony of Île Saint-Joseph, in the Salvation Islands of French Guiana, which included the infamous Devil’s Island. The revolt was a response to the guards killing an anarchist prisoner. The uprising was quickly put down, with the guards slaughtering several anarchists, and torturing many more, some of whom later died from their wounds. Captain Alfred Dreyfus was held there (1895-98) after his wrongful, antisemitic conviction for treason. Charles Delescluze, libertarian socialist and future leader of the Paris Commune, was sent there in 1853. Clément Duval, a member of the Panther of Batignolles anarchist gang of robbers, spent 14 years on Devil’s Island, making 20 escape attempts. In 1901, he succeeded and fled to New York, where lived until his death at the age of 85. The first political prisoners brought to Guiana were Jacobins, in 1794. Numerous slave rebellions also occurred in the colony, until slavery was finally abolished, in the wake of the 1848 French Revolution. The novel and film “Papillon” takes place there, as does Joseph Conrad's short story “An Anarchist” (1906). Delescluze, who was killed on the barricades during the Commune, wrote an account of his imprisonment in Guiana, “De Paris à Cayenne, Journal d'un transporté.” And Duval wrote about it in his 1929 memoir, “Outrage: An Anarchist Memoir of the Penal Colony.” Guiana is the only continental South American territory to remain a European colony into the 21st century. #workingclass #LaborHistory #prison #uprising #Revolution #anarchism #pariscommune #devilsisland #slavery #guiana #books #papillon #novel #memoir #writer #author @npub1wceq...lzu8

Yet, teachers in the U.S. are forbidden from talking about this. They are threatened with being fired for teaching about Palestinian history, or the Israeli occupation, even when it's in the curriculum. They are threatened with being fired, and they get creepy parents stalking them at night, for displaying posters in their classrooms showing solidarity with Palestinian children. Their unions refuse to take a stand in solidarity with Palestinian teachers, or with Palestinian unions, because they are afraid of being accused of antisemitism by zionist members of their union, and zionist community members. No one is free until we are all free.

Today in Labor History October 20, 1947: HUAC launched its anti-Communist witch hunt of Hollywood stars, resulting in a blacklist that barred many from working in the industry for years. The list included Humphrey Bogart, Katherine Hepburn, James Cagney, Charlie Chaplin, Lena Horne, Pete Seeger and Orson Welles. Fascist Gerald LK Smith assailed them as “alien minded Russian Jews.” Ronald Reagan and Walt Disney were also key accusers. The blacklist lasted until 1960, when Dalton Trumbo, a Communist Party member from 1943 to 1948, was officially credited as the screenwriter of the films Exodus and Spartacus (both 1960). #workingclass #LaborHistory #huac #communism #anticommunist #witchhunt #hollywood #blacklist #antisemitism #fascism #waltdisney #orsonwelles #peteseeger #russia #reagan #charliechaplin

Today in Labor History October 19, 1910: Luigi Lucheni hanged himself in his prison cell. He was an Italian anarchist and the assassin of Empress Elisabeth of Austria. His head was preserved in formaldehyde displayed in Vienna's Narrenturm until 2000. The assassination began an international conference of 21 nations, where anarchism was defined as terrorism and nations resolved to surveil suspected anarchists and permit capital punishment for assassination of sovereigns. #workingclass #LaborHistory #anarchism #luigilucheni #prison #assassination #terrorism #repression #freespeech

Today in Labor History October 19, 1944: A coup was launched against dictator Juan Federico Ponce Vaides, beginning the ten-year Guatemalan Revolution, which led to the rise of democratically elected President Jacobo Árbenz, and the only years that representative democracy existed in Guatemala from 1930 until the end of the civil war in 1996. Arbenz won the presidency in 1950, promising to transform the nation from a feudal economy into a modern, capitalist state. He led the implementation of social, political and agrarian reforms that were influential across Latin America. However, the reform that most angered the wealthy elite, and the leaders of United Fruit, were his agrarian reform policies, including the immediate transfer of all uncultivated land from large landowners to their poverty-stricken laborers. United Fruit was the largest corporation operating in Guatemala. They controlled vast territories and transportation networks throughout Central America, Colombia, and the West Indies, and maintained a virtual monopoly in the so-called banana republics of Costa Rica, Honduras, and Guatemala. At the bequest of United Fruit, CIA-director Allan Dulles, who was also a board member of United Fruit, orchestrated a coup that overthrew Arbenz in 1954, leading to decades of genocide against the Indigenous Peoples of Guatemala, as well as the torture and murder of thousands of Communists, Socialists, labor leaders, clergy and activists. In the 1980s, United Fruit officially became Chiquita. Their violence and corruption were described in the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Thomas Pynchon, O. Henry, and Pablo Neruda. #workingclass #LaborHistory #guatemala #genocide #indigenous #communism #socialism #arbenz #torture #cia #Revolution #Pynchon #garciamarquez #pabloneruda #poetry #books #ficiton #historicalfiction #novels #author #writer @npub1wceq...lzu8

Today in Labor History October18, 1927: The trial of Sholom Schwartzbard began for killing Ukrainian nationalist Symon Petliura, for slaughtering 15 members of his family in Pogroms. Schwartzbard was a Russian-born French Yiddish poet and an anarchist. He served in the French and Soviet militaries. #workingclass #LaborHistory #anarchism #ukraine #russia #soviet #communism #antisemitism #yiddish #assassination #poetry #books @npub1wceq...lzu8